Today, there is an annual growth rate of 66% of reported experiences among companies on significant security breaches. Every month, Cyber trends for SME are experiencing major security breaches. The trend of evolving cybersecurity threats is growing and becoming complex. However, despite such a situation, there is a decrease of 4% of companies and entrepreneurs’ investing in cybersecurity.
Globally, all businesses have to put themselves on the cyberspace to go with the flow of competition and market reach. Along with this trend is the recurring attacks that continually evolve and mutate as security system upgrades.
The complexity of cyber trends for SME brings the challenge
When you understand the primary source and flow of sensitive information, then you can adequately establish your cyber protection system. Hence, confidential information can only be adequately protected when there is a basic understanding of where it is and how it flows. Moreover, security controls will require significant resources, standard policies, and cost to protect information.
Moreover, companies are setting up their own IT systems and organizational procedures to protect pure to complex information. These companies have networks within networks, the secured profile of suppliers, and complex communication pathways.
Although, they set-up shared network drives and workspaces to hold information. These digital environments have millions of files with loose protection structure, no standards, weak management, and protection. Often, personnel is over-provided with access to information that is commonly becoming the pathway to damage and hacking of sensitive information.
Furthermore, there is a business that uses shadow IT and shadow cloud. According to the cyber assessment report, there were around 700 different cloud services that do not have a proper risk management process.
Sources of Threats in the Cyber trends for SME
Consequently, dealing with cyber threats is essential to know who and the cause of the danger before dealing with the appropriate technology to address, avoid, or lower the impacts of a risk. Remember that the threat developers are consistently evolving. But the sources of threats remains constant. Remember that there is always a human intervention in any cyber risk bringing any damaging intentions.
One of the classic examples is during the US presidential campaign in 2016, where a revelation of SecureWorks about the tactical details of Russian Threat group-4127 that happen on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign emails. In September of the same year, a report from Bill Gertz of the Washington Times showed another cyber attack on Clinton’s emails where the suspects are either China or Russia.
It only tells the SME’s that anyone can be a victim. Probably not your business, but hackers might have interest in one of your clients. Most of the critical persons buy and relate with small companies and entrepreneurs and stores, that is why smaller companies are attractive to hackers and cybercriminals. It is because small business tends to have a weak online security system. They also spend more time doing business online via cloud services while not accessing encryption technology. In other words, the small and medium enterprises are the best entry point of the pathways to get sensitive information to give a prick to these significant people and companies related to your business.
Thus, the laws that try to safeguard commercial bank accounts are not strong enough to protection from cyber threats. Worst, if money was lost in the bank accounts because of hacking, and the banks were able to prove that their security systems meet the federal standards, they will not reimburse any amount you lost.
Top five security threats of Cyber Trends for SME
Meanwhile, small and medium entrepreneurs mistakenly believe that they are immune to cyber threats. It holds untrue. The Information Security Breaches Survey have revealed on their assessment that 60% of the small businesses have experienced a security breach.
The research suggests that SMEs should mainly be aware of the following risks:
· Fishing and spear-Phishing
Cybercriminals often take the opportunity to maximize the lack of security staff awareness for them to gain access to sensitive information. Indeed, a report from the Information Security Breaches Survey says that there are 22% of small businesses experience staff-related security breaches.
More emphatically, Cybercriminals use Phishing as a method to trick users into revealing personal information. It works by using an email that appears to be from a legitimate source. Henceforth, it combines with a website link that also looks like to be genuine. According to the breach investigation report of Verizon in 2014, at least 18% of the users who receive the trick will likely click and link in the phishing email and compromise their information.
· Insecure passwords
Above all, password management has been a significant challenge for any company. Even individuals are not conscious of securing their passwords. According to SailPoint Market Pulse Survey, at least 56% of employees in a company practice the reuse of passwords for the personal and corporate applications that they access daily. At least 14% of employees use the same password across all applications. Thus, employees intentionally use only three different passwords, and 20% of them share the password with their team members.
· Network Vulnerabilities
Accordingly, there are at least 45% of small businesses in the UK experiencing infection from viruses or other malware.
The weak spot of the organization’s network is called vulnerability. Accordingly, the weakness of the network can invite hacking and compromise by a security threat. When you fail to update the system, then the vulnerability of the network increases. When your network increases its vulnerability, you may lose data, increase downtime of your site, and cost for the staff time to rebuild the system.
· Website vulnerabilities
Web applications are susceptible to many types of attack. It includes remote code execution, SQL injection, format string vulnerabilities, cross-site scripting (XSS), and username enumeration. When a cyber-attack is successful, they get control of the website, steal sensitive data, loss of money, and damage a company’s reputation.
· Mobile malware
Admittedly, small businesses and companies are allowing their employees to bring their own devices to use for work. Hence, mobile malware is coming from these devices. After allure, the SMEs admit that they have not done anything to mitigate the risks. Though there is staff that is aware and capable of establishing security over their devices.
Essentials of Cyber trends for SME
The UK Government Cyber Essentials Scheme is established to provide support to SMEs that do not have resources to address cybersecurity issues. The scheme provides five controls that businesses can implement.
The five control areas:
- Secure configuration
- Boundary firewalls and Internet gateways
- Access control and administrative privilege management
- Patch management
- Malware protection
Security of Cyber trends for SME
In 2018, the cybersecurity war was heightened because of the severe data breaches in 2017. It indicates that there is a lot of work to do. Here are the cybersecurity trends:
1. Maximize the availability of advanced analytics to improve the data security
Succinctly, There is a wide range of products of tools to prevent data loss as well as antivirus software to protect information and minimize data breach. Although, the use of Safety of Information and Event Management Software (SIEM) is significant to mitigate the risk of a data breach while generating a massive volume of data. The availability of analytics can help businesses understand the trend and able to place strict protocols and controls.
2. Custom the cyber trend for SME security
Meanwhile, Cybersecurity solution continues to evolve because vendors of these security solutions continue to expand options as cybercriminals continuous scale-up their ways and means to launch cyber-attacks. Vendors are also offering personalized solutions that take into consideration.
3. Use of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence
Indeed, SMEs need to consider machine learning tools and AI to identify and predict attacks. However, never underestimate the ability of cybercriminals because they are so talented that they can potentially exploit the codes and system of AI.
4. Blockchain for data security
The Blockchain technology data will enable the storage of data in a distributed and decentralized approach. The data storage uses an open source ledger and not in one location only. In this way, it makes it difficult for hackers because there are several participants in the blockchain network that can immediately notice when there is a sudden alteration. Most of the breaches are because of inside errors and inappropriate use of access.
5. Use Gartner’s CARTA in decision making
In brief, the Continuous Risk and Trust Assessment (CARTA) is an approach that conducts the continuous process of review, re-assessment, and adjustment of data safety solutions. The strategy intends to change the old mindset of businesses that after fixing the breach, they forget about it. Making CARTA as a cybersecurity culture in the company, the company will become highly smart and wiser in making decisions and execute immediate actions.